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Combat Wombat sends the news that the government in Australia has begun waffling on whether country-wide Internet censorship will be mandatory. 'The Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory Internet filtering plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code. ... [The shadow communications minister] said he had never heard of a voluntary mandatory system. ... Senator Conroy's statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content.' The censorship plan, which has been called 'worse than Iran,' was bypassed even before trials started. A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation. of this story at Slashdot.

Supposed details on Nokia's next Internet Tablet, possibly called the N900, have leaked out. Apparently, the device is styled like the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, though smaller, with a 3.5-inch WVGA (480x800 pixels) resolution touchscreen display. Read the full story here.

One for each hand seems to the limit on number of devices executives are willing to put up with. At the Reuters Global Technology Summit, executives from well-known companies indicated that out of the office, they don’t want to be bothered carrying several devices around. Rich Templeton of Texas Instruments, talking about mobile internet devices, led the [...]

A wedding videographer has established a booming internet business, following his hunch to produce cheaper memory cards for his Sony HD camera.

Professor surprised by court victory he hopes will encourage others to take on Chinese web censorsA Chinese academic has successfully sued an internet company for closing his website after he posted articles on subjects including corruption and environmental issues.Hu Xingdou, professor of economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said he hoped his case would encourage other users to protect their rights and net censors to make decisions more responsibly.'I was surprised when I won. In the past, there have been people suing like me, but either the court did not take the case or they failed. This is the first successful case in China of a netizen or internet user suing their internet service provider,' Hu told the Guardian.'Some have said it is only an individual case which has met with an open-minded judge. But I don't think so, though an open-minded judge may have played a part. Before the case started, it was widely reported by the media. The court must know clearly how signi

Professor surprised by court victory he hopes will encourage others to take on Chinese web censorsA Chinese academic has successfully sued an internet company for closing his website after he posted articles on subjects including corruption and environmental issues.Hu Xingdou, professor of economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said he hoped his case would encourage other users to protect their rights and net censors to make decisions more responsibly.'I was surprised when I won. In the past, there have been people suing like me, but either the court did not take the case or they failed. This is the first successful case in China of a netizen or internet user suing their internet service provider,' Hu told the Guardian.'Some have said it is only an individual case which has met with an open-minded judge. But I don't think so, though an open-minded judge may have played a part. Before the case started, it was widely reported by the media. The court must know clearly how signi

Hugh Pickens writes 'New Scientist reports that a team of steganographers at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland have figured out how to send hidden messages using the internet's transmission control protocol (TCP) using a method that might help people in totalitarian regimes avoid censorship. Web, file transfer, email and peer-to-peer networks all use TCP, which ensures that data packets are received securely by making the sender wait until the receiver returns a 'got it' message. If no such acknowledgment arrives (on average 1 in 1000 packets gets lost or corrupted), the sender's computer sends the packet again in a system known as TCP's retransmission mechanism. The new steganographic system, dubbed retransmission steganography (RSTEG), relies on the sender and receiver using software that deliberately asks for retransmission even when email data packets are received successfully (PDF). 'The receiver intentionally signals that a loss has occurred,' says Wojciech Ma

(Telecompaper) Indian operator Tata Teleservices has entered into a contract with Yahoo! India. As a result, a co-branded Yahoo! India homepage will serve as the default across all Tata Indicom internet access devices. The contract will enable Yahoo! India to reach out directly to millions of users subscribing to Tata Indicom internet services, such as Photon Plug2Surf, Photon Plus and Photon Pro Wireline Broadband. Tata Indicom subscribers will be able to find information on services like bill payment, tariff plans and promotions on the portal. Users will also have access to the online content and communication services through Yahoo!'s flagship properties such as Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Cricket and Yahoo! Mobile.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australia woman's account of a late night shooting in Sydney has turned her into an Internet sensation with T-shirts, mugs and a dance remix made in her honor but there's just one problem -- she made it up.

(Telecompaper) Russian internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies (DST) has offered to invest USD 200 million in Facebook at a USD 10 billion valuation for the company's preferred stock, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on the offer. Under the terms of DST's two-part offer, the Russian investment group would also offer to buy between USD 100 million and USD 150 million in Facebook common stock at a USD 6.5 billion valuation, according to the same source. The amount would likely be used to buy up some Facebook employees' shares in the company and would depend on how many employees were interested in selling their shares. DST owns shares in a number of internet businesses, including Russia's largest website Mail.ru and a Polish social-networking site. At the end of 2007, Facebook sold a stake to microsoft which valued the company's preferred stock at approximately USD 15 billion. Facebook expe